basic reflections

The Seeds Of Life

If the seed of life within me

Were to die unborn?

If it were never to meet the fertile soil

Which it needs for its blossoming?

What if everything I hoped this life could be

Were to turn out a joke

And deadness the only real thing I felt?

 

Perhaps if I learnt to watch

The deadness and

To see its stifling hold on my mind

Watching with care and attention too

The fear which followed in its wake

Fear

Of my own betrayal of life

 

The watching might open a door

And behind this door might lie the fertile soil -

Caressed by wind and water -

Of love, which makes all things grow

In a magic moment deadness would

Turn to life and I would start to know myself

Uma

Where is Paradise?

From a note read out to the Turkish and Indian training groups which met for a workshop in Cappadocia in August 2011

Yesterday Efe, one of the participants in the Turkish training group, asked me a question. He said something like, how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell? It was a good question. I thought about it for a moment.

 What really is the difference between the two? For many people, heaven is a place where everything is beautiful and life unfolds smoothly. It always feels comfortable and warm. And hell of course, is the opposite. It’s the wrong place, wrong people, a place where we don’t like what is happening. Hell is actually the feeling, I don't want to be here. But there is another way of looking at paradise and hell.

 You can find paradise in the middle of chaos and pain and in the middle of hell too. This is what I experienced in a session during the workshop in Turkey. One minute I saw only hell around me, people were miserable, nobody seemed to be okay with themselves, the air seemed to burst with unmet expectations and I felt myself being pulled into the trap of disgust, disappointment and suffering. Then suddenly it hit me. This is how it is, right now. THIS is how it is. And what’s more, it's ok. I suddenly found myself smiling at the discovery. It didn’t have to be any other way. From one moment to the next I found myself, unbelievably, transported from hell to paradise. Through the simple step of having accepted things exactly the way they were.

Why is it necessary for us to take things the way they are and what exactly does it mean? It means, I found out, to be here and now, not somewhere else in time and thought. It means to make peace with yourself and others. And this acceptance creates a healing space around us. A space in which we ourselves can be seen and accepted as we are. All of us have in some way been hurt in our lives, been betrayed, wounded, let down. To become whole again, to become free of this pain needs the healing touch of acceptance. From ourselves first of all and of course when others also accept us it is beautiful.

The question which often arises then, is, can we together create this healing space between us in our lives? A space in which it becomes possible to let go, to drop our expectations of ourselves and each other, and to come into contact with the truth of the moment – good, bad or indifferent as it might be? Are we capable, are we ready to look at ourselves the way we are. Can I see my own competitiveness, my fears, my need to be special, or whatever it might be, and say to myself, “OK. This is the way I am.” Without defiance, without judging, without at first wanting to change anything. Can I look at these things with curiosity and interest and is it possible for me to show this same interest in others? Can I, through this simple step of being interested in seeing myself the way I am and in seeing others too the way they are, help to create a space for us to live in paradise, together? Because among other things, paradise is a place where it feels alive. A place where one is in a state of constant wonder. Where each moment has a new feel to it, a place touched by the breath of freshness. And only a real live interest in the truth and in “what is” can help to create this state.

However, one often comes across this misconception, that to accept means to be passive and resigned to our fate and to opt for the status quo. In actual fact it is the opposite that happens. Our refusal to accept the truth is what holds us in a state of permanent expectation and discontent. Inner acceptance dissolves the roadblock and brings about change. It brings about a certain clarity which makes action possible. And not just action which comes out of fear or defensiveness the way we are acquainted with it, but action which is intelligent and in the interests of the whole. Because when we act out of acceptance and love we can do what is right without being caught in conflict and anger. Our action is not influenced by fear, but rather, it comes from clear sightedness.

 This is how it is. This is how it is now. It doesn’t have to be any other way. To feel the present moment in your mind and in your body without fighting it. Is it possible?  

Uma

The Strange Things We Do With Love

A passage from the book "About The Innermost" by Samuel Widmer

 

How strange it is, what we do with love, and how respectable it becomes. Our love for god, our love for those close to us, our love for our partner, our love for the family. How daintily we have divided it into love which is profane and sacred, into duty and responsibility, into obedience and the readiness to die for the native country and to trick death by doing this. Priests talk about it, and also generals, when they plan wars; politicians and also the average man who suffers constantly because of it and who complains about it. All of them are occupied with it.

 

Jealousy and envy nourish this pseudo love and relationship is contained in its prison. It flickers over the canvas of every cinema and the magazines are full of it. Every radio and every TV station daily broadcasts its pattern of conditioning. When death takes this love away from us, we hold it tight in photo albums or as a painting, which keeps our memory of it alive. And religious beliefs help many as well, to cling to them further. Generation after generation is brought up according to these images of love, and suffering goes on without end. The continuation of this love is pleasure, and with this, comes pain as well, always through the back door. But we try to avoid the one and hold on tight to the other. We want love, but not death, which goes hand in hand with it. We want the new, but not the destruction of the old, which must precede it. This continuity is the stability and security in our relationships. No change is allowed because relationship is habit. Habit is security, and that brings worries. We hang on to this never-ending machinery of pleasure and pain and this thing we call love. In order to escape the weariness and the surfeit which come from it, we create religion with its beliefs, military structures with their endless wars, the pleasure-industry with its possibilities of escape, and all the romantic kitsch, which keeps us functioning at an immature and childish level. Also romance offers a wonderful way to escape from all the facts of pleasure and suffering. And, of course, as a last chance to escape and hope, there remains God, whom we have also made into a respectable and profitable entity.

 

But all that is not love. Love has no continuity. It cannot be carried over into tomorrow, it has no future. What does have future, is memory and memories are the ashes of all that is dead and buried. Love has no tomorrow, it cannot be trapped in time and made into something respectable. It is, when there is no more time. It contains no promise, no hope. Hope brings despair with it. Love does not belong to any god, and neither does it go with thought and feeling.

 

It is not produced by the brain. It exists outside of us. A brain which is empty, which is free from possession and identification, which is nothing, can receive it. It lives and dies every minute. And with it, the awakened, liberated mind, which receives it. It is a terrible thing, because it is destruction. It is destruction without tomorrow. Love is destruction. Life and death are one in it. It is the inevitable. And because of that, it is home.